punkduck wrote:We had a discussion about different topologies with blindsaypatten, so first thing is to see what is happening with your character when you change e.g. gender in MakeHuman from male to female. Use wireframe-mode in MakeHuman, it is the easiest way to make it visible.

This was the first thing I looked at --- see upthread -- and you are right, the topology changes a lot when you just age the human, without changing anything else. And where those edge loops shift is exactly where my jacket shifts when I age the human.

punkduck wrote: When I compared your baby jumper and my baby romper, there are not big differences. The structure is similar. One difference is that you do not use delete groups. You should use it, when your character is posed, otherwise skin might be visible outside. I used the baby + helper human and created two additional vertex-groups for the arms, because in T-Pose vertices of the sleeves try to stay near the body. I first thought of reworking your asset because I had exactly the same problem, but in the end I fixed this problem only in Blender (Nayka's left arm is in T-Pose, when you look at the picture).

Especially the romper/jumper ends on loops forming legs, arms and neck. And only the neck is deforming a bit, when you change gender etc. the other loops will stay in form. So this will work in most cases, only the texture might look funny. That's the reason for the positive result and it will work with nearly all overall-type clothes.

Y'know, I get so caught up in design, topology, UV mapping, etc, that I often forget to do the simple stuff, like re-assigning vertex groups after applying the Mirror modifier, and making Delete groups. Then I get all lazy and just do masking in Blender, as needed. But I will try to remember delete groups for stuff I share because not everyone knows how to do the masking manually in Blender.

Since the baby jumper worked well and fit most humans, I never did the vertex groups thing with it, and just kept the automatic ones created by MakeClothes.

But I have tried controlling the result with vertex groups before and the results have mostly been either the same as the automatic groups or a big ol' mess.

I have done many trial and error processes with regard to which vertices should be assigned to which groups to differentiate between the limbs and torso on the human and where they are in relation to the clothes as they often do not align with one another, especially when the poly counts between the clothes and the human are different. I can't ever seem to get it quite right for the armpit and crotch areas to deform well when posed --- or sometimes to look normal even when the human is just resting.

Any pointers in this regard would be greatly appreciated as the documentation, while quite useful and informative, is still rather sparse.

punkduck wrote:Sometimes I try to use rigid groups, like for spike collar or for some buttons and buckles and the cosplay assets of Wonder Woman etc. but also these have their limits, because you scale in x, y and z direction. The shield of Wonder Woman becomes oval and a button between the breasts of a female character is doing the same, when you enlarge the breasts and there is no space left in between.

I have had some great fun with the rigid groups thing and the weird results it can produce in some cases. But it is mighty handy for stuff like glasses and tools/weapons.

punkduck wrote:I've a rule of thumb:

jacket, t-shirt, sweater, pullover, coat: use helper

tight t-shirt: use body and tell the friends of big bust sizes to use blender to fix it unless you want a latex suit

pants: use body (or helper, but then delete right/left vertex groups from the skirt, or create own groups leaving out the skirt!)

skirt: helper, delete right/left groups from the red tights.

hat, helmet, glasses: body, take rigid groups

lingerie, underwear, swimwear: body

You should copy/paste this into the wiki. I understand that these are just general rules of thumb that might not work in all cases, but it is a starting point.

I'm pretty sure I am not assigning the vertex groups right. I mean do you make groups for just the arms, or the arms and part of the shoulders?

Any tips on this will be greatly appreciated. I have learned a lot from this forum, the documentation and tutorials, but the secret to controlling the results with vertex groups is still somewhat shrouded in mystery.

I have been experimenting and experimenting with different combinations of vertex groups on the human and the helpers and parts of the human and the helpers and the results have been mixed.

Using the tights and only the tights, I get a pretty universal fit when changing the human's age and proportions, but then it breaks in the armpits when posed. The crotch area has to be in an extreme position to break, one that a person wearing a suit would not be in, anyway. But the bottom of the suit jacket pulls toward the crotch.

Using the tights and just the part of the skirt that covers the bottom of the jacket solves the bottom of the jacket issue, but not the armpits problem -- obviously.

I revisited VscorpianC's YouTube tutorial (part four is relevant to fitting), and she does the "create vertex groups from selection" thing by selecting all the vertices on the human with helpers form (earlier in the vid, she selected and scaled the hair and penis vertices to almost zero get them out of the way) and clicking the button. I tried this and it made a big ol' mess. Granted, VscorpianC was making a baby onesie that doesn't cover the legs or arms.

Now in the wiki, there are three methods/examples of "using vertex groups to control the results," the one with a "*group" plus three vertices on the human for rigid items (works great for glasses, hats, tools, etc) "the medallion one," as I've come to call it, which involves assigning all vertices of the item and only one vertex on the human to a custom group, and then there's the one about the teeth, whose method seems like it should translate to other "clothing" items and body parts. But I must be doing something wrong here because I get the worst results of all of my experiments. Heck, fitting on just the human without any helpers works better.

I have read several previous discussions about assigning vertex groups to either make skirts stretch across the legs like skirts are supposed to, and to separate the arms from the torso in shirts. The fitting skirts with the skirt helper thing is obvious and works very well for dresses and skirts -- and using just a few rows of vertices from it on pants usually fixes wedgies.

But the armpits thing is more elusive because humans are not just torsos with arms on a swivel, there are shoulders and clavicles in between the torso and arms. So, do I need to make vertex groups for those, even if they consist only of one or two edge loops?

If I ever get this figured out, at least to a workable point -- I'm not a perfectionist -- I will be more than glad to post the workflow to the wiki, if I have sufficient status here to do so.

Any tips from experience would be greatly appreciated, and not just by me.

Just as a short side not (hoping I'm right here): "Create vertex groups from selection" is a convenience function that sorts your preselected vertices, you want your vgs create from, automatically to left, right and middle.

Now, I know that the offset scaling thing is probably important, but I just don't get how it works and the documentation on it is rather sparse and outdated.

The documentation has the latest and greatest in its illustrations...

Btmc09.png (20.74 KiB) Viewed 2327 times

But the text seems to be describing workflow for the older version...

Show Offset scaling. The location of a clothing vertex depends on two data: a point on a body triangle, described in barycentric coordinates, and the offset from that point. The offset is scaled in the X, Y and Z directions depending on the size of a certain body part.Body Part. Set this to the body part which is most affected. The choices are: Custom, Body, Genital, Head, Torso, Arm, Hand, Leg, Foot.Examine Boundary. Select the boundary vertices with Set boundary is invoked.Set Boundary. Set the boundary to vertices determined by the selected body part.Custom Boundary. To manually set the bounday box.X1, X2, Y1, Y2, Z1, Z2. The vertex numbers of the six vertices which define the scaling boundary. The X scale is determined from the distance between vertices X1 and X2, the Y scale by Y1 and Y2, and the Z scale by Z1 and Z2.

The "medallion" tutorial mentions this, but it refers to the older version in both the text and illustrations.

Those numbers have got to mean something, but heck if I can figure it out.

I see that when "Examine Boundary" is clicked, the vertices outlining the boundary of the body part in the dropdown are selected; head, torso, arm. leg, etc. It is sorta helpful to get a better understanding of what's going on, but I'm not sure what to do with this data or how to practically use it.

There is a "custom" option and when I change those numbers and click "Examine Boundary" it seems to select the vertices according to those numbers. Again, I could do that all day long but have no clue whatsoever about what to do with it.

I have yet to try running MakeClothes with "Use Shearing" or "Mirror Bounding Box" or both checked. I cannot find any sort of documentation on this.

Clicking on "Print Vertex Numbers" doesn't seem to do anything at all.

Really, I am a halfway decent writer, so if I can get some help with this from those with experience and I can figure out a workable workflow, I will help to improve the documentation.

Just as a short side not (hoping I'm right here): "Create vertex groups from selection" is a convenience function that sorts your preselected vertices, you want your vgs create from, automatically to left, right and middle.

So, I am running into the limitations of and bugs in the software and it's not just because I'm doing something wrong here.

Now that I have confirmed this, I can try to figure out some kind of workaround, or a way to minimize the problem. Thus far, I have noticed that I get the best -- relatively speaking -- arm deformations when the clothing is fit to the human without helpers form. However, the better fit comes from using the tights helper with a few rows of skirt helper.

Yes, "Create Vertex Groups From Selection" automatically assigns whichever vertices you have selected on the human or human with helpers into mid, right and left vertex groups, depending upon where the selected vertices are located in relation to the X axis.

Not chiming in so much as much as to encourage you to continue and show that we are paying attention also feel free to update the wiki with your discoveries which should help us all when blender makes it's workflow shift with 2.8 as all of the quirky things will most like have new expressions with the change in blender's API so documenting the current behaviour will be critical so thank you for the effort

MargaretToigo wrote:Okay, running MakeClothes with "Use Shearing" checked doesn't seem to make any difference at all.

I know it looks like I'm talking to myself here, but if I document what I'm doing, I might be able to figure something out.

Of course, if anyone want to chime in with anything at all, please do...

I hope I'm not upsetting anyone, but there is a much easier way to solve the quadrangle distortions in the armpit. It takes three steps, and works for any piece of clothing, armor, gown, etc.

(1) Create a small plane (rotate x 90, s .25) close to the breastbone of the model, and subdivide it once, finishing by deleting the vertices to the right (I'm working left to right for this example);

(2) Create a circle of 32 vertices around the armpit, at the place where distortions are the most severe, then extrude towards the center of the chest (no larger than the plane you've created, however), so that you have a ring of cloth;

(3) Connect two vertices on the left side of the plane to two vertices on the ring you've just made, and then Add Mirror Modifier.

That's it. You've solved the hardest problem first. You can now extrude your ring to make a sleeve (on the left) or fill in the chest area on the right.

I've created a muumuu to show the finished result. The whole thing took 15 minutes.

Last edited by brkurt on Sun Dec 17, 2017 2:20 am, edited 1 time in total.